Till the End of Tom Hardback - 2004

One

My mind was on Steinbeck; my foot was on a hand.

I screamed.

No one responded, most definitely not the man on the floor.

I had wanted to escape the headmaster’s annual interminable address to the student body. Neither his ideas nor his words had changed or improved over the years I’d heard them, and when I reached the limits of my endurance, I fabricated an excuse.

Put more precisely, I lied. “An emergency,” I’d whispered as I made my way out of the auditorium.

A new wise saying: Be careful what you fabricate, because I turned the corner and there he lay, a certifiable emergency, crumpled and inert at the foot of the wide marble stairs, a thin halo of blood around his head.

He was face-up, looking surprised, as well he might, be given his position and the fact that his right cheek was indented, as if it had buckled.

My mind finally activated. I pulled out my cell phone to dial for help, although the man seemed well beyond any.

I saw movement out of the side of my eye, and turned quickly, fearing another shock, but it was only Mrs. Wiggins, the school’s most recent—and again unsuccessful—attempt to find a competent secretary. She tiptoed out of the office, not exactly racing to my rescue. In fact, she approached so slowly that she was close to moving backward. She stopped altogether when she was a few feet from me.

I reached the 911 operator. “This is Amanda Pepper,” I said, “a teacher at Philly Prep.” I gave our address and the situation and ended the call.

Mrs. Wiggins remained as immobile as the man at the bottom of the stairs. “What—what—” she said, shaking her head as if to negate the evidence of her eyes. “What—”

“Please—go to the auditorium. Tell Dr. Havermeyer to keep everybody there. Explain what’s happened.”

“Who—do you know who that is?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.

“Better hurry. The assembly’s nearly over.”

She shook her head again. Maybe she had a degenerative disease. “I’m not supposed to leave the office.” She sounded the way a rabbit would, if it could talk. “I’m not even sure I should be out here, because what if the phone—”

“Mrs. Wiggins, this is an emergency.” You had to spell things out for this woman, basic, primitive things, and although our recent rapid turnover of school secretaries was not a good situation, I couldn’t help but hope it would continue, and that the Wiggins era was nearing its end. “I think this man’s dead,” I said as patiently as I could manage. “A lot of people are about to burst in here—police, paramedics, I don’t know who all else. The last thing anybody wants would be several hundred adolescents converging on this spot.”

“Police? But—why? Is this a crime? Do you—did you see something? Somebody?”

“They have to be called for accidents, too.” I waited. So did she. “Go, Mrs. Wiggins. Hurry!” Even Havermeyer’s seemingly endless drone, “Musings on the Possibilities of Life During and After High School,” ultimately concluded. “Hurry!” I said. “Do you want the students to see this?”

“Well, maybe you could—I could stay, and you could go tell—”

“Mrs. Wiggins! You’re his secretary.” I didn’t care if that made sense. I had gone AWOL from assembly and didn’t want to underline that fact. Besides, she was such a nervous, distracted creature that if I left her as sentry, she’d amble around the poor man and inadvertently ruin any evidence there might be.

She blinked, nodded, and moved toward the auditorium.

I searched for a pulse without disturbing the body. I wasn’t sure what I’d found, possibly only my own fingertips’ pulse, but he was still warm. I fumbled in my purse for a mirror to hold to his mouth. Meanwhile, I studied him, trying to figure out who he was and why he was at Philly Prep, let alone on the floor in this condition.

He was—or had been—an attractive enough middle-aged man. He had dark hair with the slightest threading of gray and regular strong features. He looked to be in his forties or early fifties, and seemed surprised to be found in such an undignified and awkward position, one leg bent to the side, the other heel still on the bottom step, his arms flung wide as if, coming down that expanse of staircase on his back, he’d tried to brace himself and failed. But the hands that failed had been well tended. No calluses that I could see, and the nails were buffed and clean.

His suit, rumpled and twisted as it was, nonetheless spoke of expensive fabric and expert tailoring, and his feet were shod in beautifully polished Italian-looking soft black leather.

How had he gotten in without attracting notice? It didn’t say much for school security, but aside from that, why would a man like this go upstairs? Everyone was obliged to be in the auditorium, so no one would have made an appointment with him for that hour. Maybe he was a parent who hadn’t been informed of the assembly or who misunderstood the time of an appointment with a teacher or counselor.

I could understand Mrs. Wiggins looking horrified by the man’s fall, but not her questions about who he was. She should have recognized him because he should have stopped at the office as the large sign by the front door requested. He looked like a man who followed the rules—at least, the easy ones.

Before I could find my mirror, the painful whine of a siren interrupted my search and speculations, and I gladly relinquished all further inquiries to the police and paramedics.

“Alive,” a paramedic said, and though they were already working at warp speed they upped the tempo, even while the officer in charge directed the forensic people to photograph the man and the area. Then he went over to stare down at the man as he was put on a gurney.

“I did it.” Mrs. Wiggins’ whisper startled me. “I did as you said. Dr. Havermeyer wasn’t happy about the situation, but he understood. You were right. He’s holding the assembly awhile longer.” She turned, frowning.

“Who is he?” I asked her.

“You’re asking me? Why?” Her eyes were coffee colored with, at the moment, the white showing all around them. “How could—why would you say such a—why would I?—what do you mean?”

She looked as if she might faint, but I didn’t take it to mean much because she looked like that a lot. Mrs. Wiggins was not a woman who delighted in surprise or change. I wondered, not for the first time, what Mr. Wiggins was like. “You’re the school secretary,” I said. “And visitors have to sign in. He’s a visitor, right?”

She paled. I watched her lips half-form syllables, then go slack again, so that only airy wordlessness emerged. There goes another job, she had to be thinking. Correctly, I hoped. We had metal scanners at the doorway, but did we need an actual guard at all hours? Even if the man had burst into the school and refused to make the slight right turn into the office to identify himself, Mrs. Wiggins would have seen him pass. The person at the desk could see the base of the staircase. If he’d refused to comply with the request to register, she could have—should have—called the police.

Unless, of course, Mrs. Wiggins—she had never offered a first name, and the more I knew her, the more I doubted that anyone had ever been on a first-name basis with her, including Mr. Wiggins—unless Mrs. Wiggins hadn’t been at her desk when this man entered.

“Please,” she said. “I—I can’t lose this job. I’ve had hard times. I—don’t tell, please?” Her shapeless body compressed, grew wider and closer to the ground in a near-cringe, as if she expected me to hit her.

Or as if too many people already had hit her.

The “hard times” registered, but still, asking me to “not tell” sounded like we were in playschool. We were here as guardians of the students’ safety, and it was painfully obvious she’d failed to even say “yoo-hoo” to the stranger. “What is it I shouldn’t say? Who is it I shouldn’t tell? Why didn’t you sign him in?”

She looked pathetic, colorless, timid, and terrified, and I knew I should consider what evil forces had forged this pitiable creature. However, compassion sometimes seems too much of a psychic effort.

I wanted an answer. And maybe the right to get angry about that answer because whatever its cause, her failure to stop the visitor—not precisely a world-shaking or difficult job—had potentially endangered the school.

“I just . . . I must . . . I wasn’t feeling well, and I had to . . . you know . . . he must have come in while I was . . . you know. In the ladies’? You won’t tell, will you?”

There was no possible response except a sigh and a head-shake. I wouldn’t tell—but I wouldn’t have to. The police and the headmaster would ask her the hard questions directly.

So I stood at the side, listening—I hoped discreetly—even after the man had been rushed away and the crowd had thinned. I listened as the forensics guy walked up and down the staircase, taking pictures and making notes. The remaining officer did, in fact, ask Mrs. Wiggins what time the man had entered, and what he’d said his purpose was.

The secretary looked ever more pitiable. Rashlike patches erupted on her cheeks. Her shoulders grew rounder, her stance more like a whipped dog’s. She stammered, blushed, and shook her head. “I am so sorry,” she whispered. I saw the glint of moisture on her lashes.

To my disgust, I felt a frisson of compassion. She looked devastated. Normally, there’s a student assistant to cover for her if she has to leave for a moment. And normally, Dr. Havermeyer’s nearby as well. But during the Annual Address, the pitiable school secretary had been flying solo, and if nature had called loudly enough . . .

She wrung her hands, and she used every euphemism known to mankind for needing to use the ladies’ room.

The police didn’t seem overly concerned. Events appeared to be unfortunate, but not criminal, an apparent accident, and not an illogical one, as the staircase was not only made of marble, but long—actually two flights in one. Very showy, and perfectly designed as a grand family entryway when the school had begun its life as a pretentious private home. Built for the family’s servants back then, and the choice of most of the students and faculty these days, an ordinary, wooden normal-scale back staircase served the everyday needs of the building.

“And you found the victim?” the officer asked me. He identified himself as Owen Edwards. I knew I wasn’t supposed to have such thoughts at a time like this, but it nonetheless registered that he had TV-cop looks, not real-life cop looks. That I noticed this proves how shallow and frivolous I am, but in truth, his chiseled features made the situation feel even more surreal. I had to control the urge to scan for hidden cameras.

Maybe I let my noticing go on for too long, but he started to look familiar. “Haven’t we met before?” I asked before I could censor myself.

Praise for Gillian Roberts and her Amanda Pepper mysteries

Helen Hath No Fury
“Roberts’ gentle sense of humor enlivens the entire story. . . . Amanda is younger, funnier, and more with-it than most mystery heroines, [with] gemlike insights into modern womanhood.”
–San Jose Mercury News

Caught Dead in Philadelphia
“A stylish, wittily observant, and highly enjoyable novel.”
–Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Philly Stakes
“Lively . . . Breezy . . . Entertaining.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

I’d Rather Be in Philadelphia
“Literate, amusing, and surprising while at the same time spinning a crack whodunit puzzle.”
–Chicago Sun-Times